71. Shadows of the Past

Chapter 071
Shadows of the Past

After the attack on the Ibasan base had been concluded and it became obvious that no immediate invasion would result from it, Zorian proceeded to re-establish his link to Koth. Since he had dismissed his simulacrum in Koth before the attack, he had to rely on Daimen’s help for the second time in the restart. Although it kind of bothered him that he was forced to rely on Daimen so much, he had to admit his help made things a lot easier than they would have otherwise been.

He didn’t expect any problems to crop up and, in a way, there really hadn’t been any. The dimensional gate opened just fine, after all. The problem was that it opened directly inside the Taramatula estate. Instead of finding some out-of-the-way location in the jungle, like they had agreed on beforehand, Daimen had decided to simply open the gate inside a heavily warded room meant for receiving teleporting visitors. While a dozen or so Taramatula family members stood around the edges of the room and watched.

Zorian, who had stepped through the gate first, was so shocked at the sight that he immediately halted in his tracks. This caused Zach, who was coming right behind him, to crash into him. Thankfully, they managed to keep their balance instead of falling to the floor in a tangle of limbs. That would have been awkward.

“Hey, why did you sto– Oh. That’s a lot bigger reception that I was expecting,” Zach said, looking around.

Zorian didn’t bother responding to Zach’s feeble attempt at humor. Instead, he zeroed in on his older brother and gave him an outraged glare. “Daimen, what the hell were you thinking!?”

To his credit, Daimen actually winced at the question, looking properly guilty.

“I’m sorry,” he said, waving his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. “I didn’t have a choice, okay? I can’t leave the Taramatula estate anymore and I couldn’t just open a dimensional gate in their home without their knowledge or consent. It was either this or aborting the whole thing entirely.”

Zach and Zorian were quiet for a second, processing that statement.

“Why can’t you leave the Taramatula estate?” Zach finally asked. “Are you a prisoner or something?”

“It’s complicated,” Daimen said with a heavy sigh. “Let’s go find somewhere quiet to talk.”

Before either Zach or Zorian could say anything, one of the gathered Taramatula decided to cut in and make a suggestion. It was Ulanna, the woman who had greeted them the first time they had visited the estate.

“I know just the place,” Ulanna said. “For a family of our stature, not having an appropriate meeting room for occasions such as these would be quite an embarrassment. Please wait a minute while I make some arrangements and then we can go.”

Zorian gave Ulanna a thoughtful look. Though her words made it seem she was just trying to be a good host, he could understand the underlying message easily enough: the Taramatula were an involved party in all this, and they wanted to be present during the talk.

Ulanna raised an eyebrow at his look, as if daring him to object. He didn’t.

“That’s quite all right,” he simply said. “Me and Zach will go collapse the gate while you deal with things on your end.”

Zorian had no idea what Daimen had told the Taramatula about the gate. Hopefully he hadn’t been foolish enough to reveal that he and Zorian were opening passages between two different continents, in which case it was imperative that they close the gate quickly, before they could puzzle out the truth for themselves.

As he and Zach worked to collapse the gate, he could hear Ulanna conversing with some of the other Taramatula in the room. His grasp on the local language was still very poor, so the only thing he understood was that she ordered food and drink to be made and brought to them. Zorian was in no mood for either, but he figured out it would be impolite to try and stop her.

A little while later, they were all ushered into a relatively small but luxurious room. There were five of them present: Ulanna, Daimen, Orissa, Zach and Zorian. Despite the presence of Ulanna and Orissa, though, it was Daimen that provided most of the explanation for what was happening. Apparently, one or more members of Daimen’s team had talked to outsiders about the orb they had found, and the story had blown up very quickly. Within hours, everyone and their mother wanted to speak to Daimen to find out what he intended to do with the orb and to try and influence him to sell it to whatever group they represented.

Caught off guard by the sudden flood of interested buyers and aware that not everyone was willing to take their refusal to sell the orb in good grace, Daimen and his team retreated to the Taramatula estate and barricaded themselves there until further notice.

“The people after us can’t afford to be too brazen with the Taramatula, so we’re safe while we remain inside the estate,” Daimen concluded. “But the moment we step out we’ll be ambushed by dozens of different groups. They know we’re in here. They have the estate heavily monitored. Everyone and everything going in or out of the estate is closely tracked. I couldn’t possibly leave the estate to open the gate elsewhere.”

“Maybe I’m just stupid, but why don’t the Taramatula simply tell all these people to back off? They’re supposed to be the main political force here, no?” Zach asked.

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Ulanna said. “There are too many powerful groups making their moves here, quite a few of them from outside our sphere of influence. Though they cannot afford to take us lightly, the same is true for us as well. This is a sensitive situation and we have to move carefully. Rest assured, though, that we are taking note of every slight against us for when the time is right.”

“Another issue is that some elements of the local government are discussing the possibility of simply confiscating the orb from us by force,” Daimen said. “The Taramatula have to spend a lot of their influence on making sure that the initiative doesn’t get anywhere. Damn it, I knew it was important to keep this find a secret but I had no idea it would inspire this sort of greed…”

“It’s a portable pocket dimension of massive size,” Orissa pointed out. “On top of that, it contains ruins from the Age of Gods, and probably the remains of Awan-Temti’s wealth. There could be divine artifacts in there, plants and animals that have gone extinct in the rest of the world, anything. Of course it inspires so much greed. You’re fortunate you have the Taramatula family to shield you from all this while we figure out what to do.”

“Yes, yes, I get it,” Daimen said patiently. “I’m lucky to have you, dear.”

“Have you made any trips to the pocket dimension yet?” Zach asked curiously.

“We haven’t even discovered how to deploy the orb,” Daimen said, shaking his head. “We don’t have a command marker like Zorian does, so we have to do things the hard way.”

“Meaning?” Zach prodded for details.

“We have to reverse-engineer the control spells that are used for operating the orb,” Daimen said. “A generational treasure like this one would definitely have a method of controlling the orb without a command marker, as a safety measure if nothing else. We just have to find it. Unfortunately, that could take a while.”

Daimen gave Zorian a meaningful look. Though Zorian didn’t know for sure what he was trying to tell him, he could guess. While finding a way to operate the orb without a marker was not a priority for him and Zach, it would mean a lot for Daimen. He was probably well aware that Zorian had no intention whatsoever of revealing his abilities to Daimen outside the time loop, which would make those control spells absolutely crucial to his mission. Without them, even removing the orb from its resting place would be impossible, greatly complicating everything.

“Even if we had the means of operating the orb, we would still refrain from sending an expedition to its interior at this time,” Orissa noted. “The possibility of further guardian beasts, like that god-touched hydra, is too high. Months of preparation would be required to mount a proper expedition, and the current political situation makes such preparations impossible.”

“Yes, exactly,” Daimen quickly agreed. He turned to Zach and Zorian. “And because I’m stuck here all the time, I can’t really hire the experts I need to figure out how to operate the orb, either. The truth is that I have very little to do here. I was thinking it might be a good idea for me to disappear for a few days. Get the orb away from covetous eyes and talk to some old friends about my options.”

“This again,” Orissa said with an unhappy frown.

This sparked a brief argument between Orissa and Daimen, since Daimen didn’t want to explain what exactly he was up to and Orissa insisted that she had every right to know the details. In all honesty, Zorian thought Orissa’s position was quite reasonable and empathized with her frustration at Daimen’s evasiveness. However, he also couldn’t fault Daimen for this, since it wasn’t like he could just openly say that–

“If you want us to take you back to Cyoria with us when we reopen the gate, you should just say so,” Zach said.

Everyone sent him a shocked look. Well, everyone except Zorian – he just buried his face in his hands and tried to take deep breaths.

“Damn it, Zach…” he mumbled into his hands.

“What?” Zach protested, giving Zorian an exasperated look. “Any story you and Daimen cook up wouldn’t last a day and you know it. They’re not stupid. They’d figure it out soon enough.”

“Thank you, mister Noveda,” Ulanna told him. “I’m glad that at least one man here respects our reasoning skills.”

Zach gave her a thumbs-up and a sunny grin.

“You’re saying you opened a dimensional passage here all the way from Eldemar?” Orissa asked, sounding just a little bit incredulous.

“We do a lot of crazy stuff,” Zach said with a careless shrug.

It turned out that neither Ulanna nor Orissa were very familiar with the details of how the gate spell works. This wasn’t very surprising, as the spell was extremely rare, but somehow Zorian kept forgetting little details like that.

After Zorian gave them a brief explanation of how the gate spell functioned, Orissa gave him a strange look.

“What?” Zorian asked, feeling somewhat self-conscious.

“This method you use to ignore distance limitations requires another person helping you on the other side, yes?” she asked. Zorian nodded wordlessly. “Then how can you open a gate back to Eldemar? Can the third Kazinski brother cast the gate spell, too?”

“What, Fortov? Please,” Zorian scoffed. “He’ll be lucky not to flunk out of the academy.”

“Zorian!” Daimen protested. He never liked it when Zorian badmouthed the rest of the family.

“No, we’ll be using the simulacrum I left back in Cyoria,” Zorian said, completely ignoring Daimen’s outburst. “Since I can cast the gate spell, my simulacrum can obviously do the same.”

“Oh, so you can create a simulacrum too?” Ulanna asked casually, not sounding particularly surprised. Zorian had to hand it to her, she was very good at projecting an aura of serene confidence. Orissa seemed to be trying to mimic that attitude, but she was nowhere near good enough to pull it off. One could see that these kind of reveals bothered her and put her somewhat off-balance.

“We do a lot of crazy stuff,” Zorian said. He thought about mimicking Zach completely and giving her a thumbs-up and a cheeky smile, but quickly dropped the idea. That sort of thing was something only Zach could pull off without looking like a total idiot.

In the end, they managed to hammer out an agreement. Daimen would return to Cyoria with Zach and Zorian and would take the orb of the first emperor along with him. Zorian would leave a simulacrum in the Taramatula estate so that they could return via gate spell in exactly four days.

Zorian thought this would be the end of it, but his hopes were ruthlessly squashed when Daimen told him he still had to explain to his team that he would be away for a while.

For a moment, Zorian felt the urge to make an overdramatic gesture to the uncaring heavens. And here he’d thought this would just be a short visit to Koth, consisting of little more than replacing his lost simulacrum and asking Daimen if he had found out anything new about the orb.

Sometimes he just couldn’t win.

– break –

It was a massive relief to Zorian when the three of them finally stepped through the gate and returned to Cyoria. Both the Taramatula and Daimen’s team were on edge right now, and thus rather exasperating to deal with. He kind of felt bad for his simulacrum, who would be stuck with them for the next several days. Oh well, at least he had Kirma and Torun to talk to – those two were fairly interesting and he suspected he might be able to broker some kind of trade with at least one of them.

Regardless, he was back and could devote himself to other matters. Xvim’s efforts to convince various experts to trade their secrets with him had been reasonably successful, Sudomir had to be properly interrogated, the efforts of the researchers to understand the Ibasan gate stabilization frame were starting to bear fruit and the Silent Doorway Adepts were hinting that they were willing to send a group over to Koth to acquire a gate key. Sadly, recent events concerning Daimen and the orb had probably made that last idea a dead end in this restart. His simulacrum couldn’t possibly leave the Taramatula estate without a hundred pairs of eyes following his every move. Unfortunate. He could really use an alternate entrance to Koth that didn’t rely on Daimen right now. He would have to assign a high priority to this idea in future restarts.

Daimen had agreed to hand over the orb to him and Zach while he was in Cyoria. Partially because he figured they could find out far more about it than he could, due to possessing a marker that could actually operate it, and partially because he wasn’t entirely sure the orb would be safe in his possession. News traveled faster than people. By all rights, his little trip to Cyoria should have gone undetected by his pursuers, but he couldn’t be completely sure. Thus, he felt it was for the best if he didn’t have the orb on him unless absolutely necessary.

Zorian expected that he would be the only one that could tinker with the orb to discover its secrets, since Zach didn’t have the necessary personal soul awareness to control his marker. He was very much wrong. Apparently, Zach didn’t need to have conscious control over his marker to take command of the orb. After an hour or so of tinkering with the orb, Zach managed to connect to it instinctively.

And after that one success, he no longer needed an hour of tinkering to connect to again. Simply touching the orb would be enough to re-establish contact. Zach didn’t even have to concentrate on it to pull it off – a touch and a stray thought were enough.

Zorian was a little sour about that. The orb certainly never reacted that way to him, no matter how many hours he spent interacting with it. No, he had to spend months going through that hellish soul awareness training and then more time painstakingly studying the way the marker worked to get as far as he did. This sort of stuff really made it obvious that his marker was some kind of inferior version of the one on Zach.

It had been only a day since they were back in Cyoria when Daimen surprised him again. He wanted to talk to Kirielle and Fortov.

This was a bit of a problem. Both of their siblings knew for a fact that Daimen shouldn’t be in Cyoria. Mother and Father had gone to Koth to meet with him. How on earth did he intend to explain his presence here? But Daimen insisted that he needed to do this, and Zorian didn’t feel like arguing with him. There was probably no great harm in it, and he was pretty sure that Daimen would go and have those conversations behind his back if he was too stubborn.

Amusingly, Daimen wanted to talk to Kirielle and Fortov alone, without anyone else being present. Zorian was almost certain that meant he wanted to ask them specifically about Zorian. Hah! Fortov didn’t know anything about Zorian, and Kirielle was a little tattletale and would no doubt tell Zorian everything that she and Daimen talked about. But he told Daimen none of that and simply wished him luck before sending him on his way.

The next day, Daimen came back to talk to him, looking lost and confused.

“They didn’t even want to talk to me…” he complained, sounding quite dejected. It actually made Zorian feel bad for him somewhat.

“Come on, it’s not that bad,” Zorian comforted him. “I don’t know about Fortov, but I’m pretty sure Kirielle wouldn’t have snubbed you like that. Imaya tells me you spent an entire hour with her.”

“Yeah, but that’s all I did with her,” Daimen complained. “She spent the entire hour fidgeting and looking uncomfortable. She barely spoke, and only when I specifically prodded her. I’m not entirely sure, but I think she was actually a little scared of me. That’s…”

Damien waved his hands in the air, as if trying to convey some kind of unpronounceable concept through silent gesticulation.

“Sad?” Zorian offered.

“Sure, let’s go with that,” Daimen said. “Also worrying. And upsetting. And a whole host of other things. Especially when coupled with what happened with Fortov. Do you know what happened when I knocked on his door?”

“Not really, no,” Zorian told him. He had actually known about Daimen’s ‘talk’ with Kirielle, since she had told him all about it when he had come to Imaya’s place in the evening, but he honestly had no idea how Daimen’s talk with Fortov had gone. Not well, obviously, but it would be interesting to hear why. “What did he do?”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“He was just really abrasive to me right from the start,” Daimen said. “He refused to even let me in, eventually started shouting at me and then slammed the door in my face and ignored me.”

Huh. Interesting.

Daimen looked at Zorian, silently asking him for an explanation. Zorian said nothing, though, and Daimen grew visibly frustrated as seconds ticked by. He ran both of his hands through his hair and clutched it tightly in his fists, as if wanting to tear it off.

“You’re going to go prematurely bald if you keep doing that,” Zorian commented lightly.

Daimen gave him an unamused glare.

But he did remove his hands from his head.

“I don’t understand!” Daimen protested loudly. “Am I… Am I such a horrible older brother? I knew you didn’t like me, but even Fortov? Even little Kirielle?! Why?! What did I do?!”

Zorian clacked his tongue and considered things for a second. On one hand, he felt that Daimen was getting exactly what he deserved. On the other hand, the fact that Daimen was so upset over this meant that his mental image of him was a little… unfair. He decided to be a little nice to his older brother for a change.

“In regards to Kirielle, the answer is simple, my dear eldest brother,” Zorian told him. “You’re practically a stranger to her. By the time she was old enough to interact with people, you were almost never at home. When was the last time you talked with her? Disregarding yesterday’s meeting, of course.”

“Uhh…” Daimen fumbled.

“You can’t even remember,” Zorian stated, shaking his head. “Anyway, all she had of you were stories she heard of you. Most of which came either from Mother… or from me. After all, I’m one of the people who interacted with her the most over the years.”

“Oh, heavens help me,” Daimen lamented. “What exactly did you tell her about me?”

“The truth,” Zorian shrugged.

“You mean your truth,” Daimen accused.

“Of course,” Zorian responded, completely unmoved by the accusation. “But don’t worry, I kept quiet about your worst excesses. Truth be told, I never liked talking about you to anyone, and that included Kirielle. And besides, Mother never failed to take your side in everything. If it were just the matter of stories, Kirielle would be more ambivalent to you. The thing is, she needs help… and she knows she’ll never get it from you. She just might get it from me, though, which is why she doesn’t want to sabotage her relations with me by getting cozy with you. She knows you kind of piss me off.”

“What do you mean ‘she needs help’?” Daimen frowned. “And why are you so sure she’d never get it from me?”

“Because it would require standing up to Mother,” Zorian said.

Over the next hour or so, Zorian tried to familiarize Daimen with Kirielle’s situation. The arranged marriage their parents had prepared for her. Her desire to learn magic like the rest of them. He tried to keep the explanations brief, worried that telling this to Daimen constituted some kind of betrayal towards Kirielle, who had told him these things in confidence. He said enough for Daimen to form a rudimentary picture of what was happening with Kirielle behind the scenes, though.

“I can’t believe I never heard of this,” Daimen said, his eyes somewhat unfocused as he seemed to recall something in his head. “I speak to Mother and Father often and they never mentioned this.”

“Did you ever actually ask them about Kirielle?” Zorian asked.

Daimen was quiet for a few moments.

“…no,” he eventually admitted.

“Well, there you go,” Zorian shrugged.

Daimen exhaled heavily and then corrected his posture, sitting a little straighter in his chair.

“Okay, I admit I haven’t been very fair to our little sister. I guess I kind of deserved such a chilly reception from her,” Daimen said. “What about Fortov, then? What’s his deal?”

“How would I know?” Zorian protested. “Do you honestly think I speak to Fortov about you?”

Daimen gave him an annoyed huff. “Yes, I get it, I get it – you never talk about me to anyone if you can help it. But surely you have some inkling about how Fortov thinks and what bothers him. You’ve been interacting with him for six years now.”

Zorian made a weird face, momentarily struck speechless by this statement.

“What?” Zorian laughed. “Whatever gave you that idea? Why would I be interacting with Fortov?”

“Are… Are you serious?” Daimen asked incredulously. Zorian stared at him. “He’s your brother. You live in the same city. You can visit him anytime you want.”